Research on U.S. patent litigation trends by the intellectual property litigation analytics firm LexMachina was recently cited by the U.S. Government Accountability Office as one basis for its recommendation that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) “examin[e] trends in patent infringement litigation and consider linking this information to internal patent examination data to improve patent quality and examination. PTO commented on a draft of this report and agreed with key findings and this recommendation.”